Adweek published this Q&A with the Institute's own Joe Conason yesterday, about his recently launched daily political e-newsletter, National Memo. Here's an excerpt:

Adweek: What is National Memo? I’ve always been interested in having an Internet vehicle. My wife [Elizabeth Wagley] started a company called Progressive Book Club. That pulled together a large list of progressives, liberals, and Democrats across the country, who are very interested in political issues. We have tens and tens of thousands, and we think we’ll be up to a million in the next couple of months. I thought, what about a newsletter model for the center-left?

Why not a website? It’s a form that goes back to Tom Paine and George Seldes and Izzy Stone. For Elizabeth and me, that’s an appealing model because we think it works politically and as a business. What we’re trying to bring to readers is a very sharp take on the day’s news, a fair amount of original news, and aggregation. Of course, it has my unique sensibility and my reporting experience behind it.

Would you make it more broad? I’m definitely thinking about bringing on Joe Scarborough’s column and more conservative stuff. Smart, conservative commentary is definitely something we’ll do.

Do we need another media vehicle for the left? What we’re delivering is an audience that’s engaged, interested in travel, healthcare. From what little I know about marketing, the ROI for email marketing is better than any other form of marketing. I think we can get big brand advertisers and we will, but there will be specialized advertising and cause-related advertising as well.

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